Getting ready to go

I'm half-packed. The minor to do list is mounting, but the major to-dos are all accomplished. Yesterday I spent all day running around. Mom took me shopping for a few things at the thrift stores and the all-important Costco for those items I cannot restock in Cambodia.

Today I had a small group meeting from 11-3, then an appointment for a family to come look at Chloe. Just when I was about to cry again that I'm going to find her a stationary home (because she doesn't like being left alone, and is terrible with change, dogs, children, and moving), Kathy remembered her Mom's friend whose cat died and she really wants an affectionate cat for company. Perfect. Better at least than the couple with two little kids, and the animal rescue person who both answered my ad. And, if/when something happens to this lady, she wanted to know if I would like to take her back. That makes me feel better -- knowing that while my life is still completely up in the air she'll have a good home, but maybe someday I can have her back...

I've called my insurance company to cancel/lessen my auto coverage. I received two checks in the mail along with a letter from my sponsor child and a few bills. I have a birthday party in an hour, Flogamockers tonight, and then it's tomorrow already.

So, I'm off to eat (it might be for the first time today -- can't remember) something. Then wrap a present and head to Cowichee.

A low key day

After several days of running errands, making phone calls, checking info online, doing research, cleaning, packing, and doing laundry, today is very low key. I've showered, put together a little scrapbook to take with me, and pasted some photos into my Bible. Tonight I have my last praise and worship band rehearsal for Sunday. Tomorrow I have to get my taxes done, go to my consignment store to get the clothes I need, then go shopping for a few things with Mom.

Thank God for one calm day.

Wow. Only 48 hours. I'm in shock, the to do list is mounting, but the big stuff is all covered. At least as far as appointments go. My suitcase is partially packed on my living room floor. After several go arounds with a plastic trash bag, a shop vac, and my sleeping bag, I finally figured out how to suck all the air out of it and keep it that way. My sleeping bag and pillow are little flattened wrinkly rectangles at the bottom of my suitcase.

Mom and I went shopping today for a few things ... mending kit, pajama bottoms, sleep mask, and sudoko puzzles and a few books for the flight. Since Wycliffe, I have most of what I need already. A few toiletries I'm out of anyway, enough personal products for six months (the only things difficult to find there), and some warm weather clothes, that I'm trading some of my wardrobe for at my favorite thrift/consignment store on friday. All's just about ready. Some taxes, a few arrangements.

What I'm waiting for is Sunday, when my mission trip is presented to the congregation. Most of my 'extra' funding needs to come in that day. I'm nervous. It's a generous church, but I'm depending on them for almost everything. And it's so hard to ask. Then a few more days at home, missions meeting Tuesday morning, vaccinations Wednesday, Dad's birthday dinner in Seattle, and then everyone drops me off at the airport.

So that's the update. My main way of communicating once I'm there will be this blog. There's an internet cafe not far from base, so I'll (hopefully) have plenty of chances to stay in touch, at least for the first three months. Mail will be an option as well, for those that want to send me letters, I'll have an address available once I'm there.

And I'm off to "do stuff." Ciao.

YWAM-Cambodia

Well, everybody, as I said yesterday I was accepted to the Youth With a Mission - Battambang, Cambodia program. My flight leaves on the 20th of January, and I'll return the 29th of July.

The program begins with three months of classes and training in discipleship, learning to listen for God's voice, learning your strengths and weaknesses, what He wants you to do with your talents, and of course, how to share him in an exciting way with others. During the training we'll be doing volunteer work at the community center - where they offer classes in English, Guitar, Sewing, Bible, and also at a hospital and an orphanage. Then we'll spend 8 weeks going out into Cambodia to do work and outreach.

I've somewhere between excitement and blind panic. I literally found out that I'm going as of yesterday. This is going to be a very changing experience, and I'm afraid/excited that I'm going to come back very different, and with many priorities changed. Hopefully, I'll also know God better at the end of the six months.

This is very last minute, and I'm struggling to raise the money I need. My church mission team has generously offered to cover my school costs, and several family members and friends have also contributed. The church may also take a special offering for my plane fare, but the pastor recommended that I show that I've asked literally everyone I know for help. So here's another attempt. If any of my friends out there want to sponsor a short term missions trip, please comment or email me and I'll send you my information.

Thanks!

The Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters

“You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human being becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God.”
John Milton: The Devil’s Advocate



Free will: the gift and curse of humanity. Through free will we can fully experience God because we are given the option not to. Likewise, through free will we are allowed to craft our lives in any manner of our choosing, even if the end result resembles Hell. “The possibility of this wrong preference is inherent in the very fact of having a being, a self at all…Every conscious agent in finally committed in the long run; i.e. it rises above freedom into willed, but henceforth unalterable, union with God, or else sinks below freedom into the black fire of self-imprisonment.”1 The Great Divorce shows us the aftereffect of this choosing – stripping away the outward trappings and revealing the soul as it really is. In The Screwtape Letters we witness the process. Our choices are not simply dependent on ourselves. Powers and principalities exist that aim to help and hinder. Because of free will a person cannot be forced to act, but their own desires and inclinations can be magnified to influence a person’s decisions. Both sides have the same goal in mind – to encourage a person to “be themselves.” To the ‘angels, archangels, and the blessed company of all faithful people’ this means the relinquishing of the lesser self to regain self redeemed. To spirits ‘masquerading as angels of light’ this means the twisting of the fallen self into an unrecognizable and unredeemable horror.

Before examining Screwtape and Wormwood’s method of using free will to their advantage, let’s first look at another great fictional temptation; The Devil’s Advocate. Lewis says that “every choice reduces a little one’s freed to choose the next time.”2 Enter Kevin Lomax, a criminal defense lawyer. The Devil (under the alias John Milton) tells us the key to temptation; “If at all possible, mask it as something else…they never see me coming.”3 Milton begins by using the simple comments of others to enflame Kevin’s ego. In the guise of a local reporter, Milton encourages Kevin to choose his flawless record over the truth. He is approached by Milton’s firm and slowly flattered into slightly more ambiguous and finally evil clientel. His integrity slides further with each subsequent case. Kevin is “just doing his job.” His wife begs for some of his time, but Kevin is“doing this for her. When his wife is admitted to the hospital, he tells Milton that if he chooses her over the “case of a lifetime” he will resent her for it. Each choice seems small in itself - a little selfishness, some justification, some buried evidence and a convenient blind eye. Finally Kevin discovers that he’s cast his lot with the Devil and can’t recall how he got there. He tells Milton that he was tricked, exploited, and nothing is his fault. Milton retorts, “I’m no puppeteer, Kevin. I don’t make things happen. Doesn’t work like that…I only set the stage. You pull the strings.” Milton reveals hell’s battle strategy: sharpen human appetites, build egos, increase technology so every whim can be instantly satisfied, build up dreams and fantasies until each person becomes his own God. Milton doesn’t need to go to great lengths to tempt people, he needs only to encourage them to pursue their own self-interest. “What do I want?” he asks Kevin, “I want you to be yourself!”

Screwtape and Wormwood use similar tactics to Milton, but more subtly. They take advantage of the fact the God holds himself back from any revealing of Himself which would negate free will; “He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning… But he never allows this state of affairs to last long.”4 In a letter to Authur Greeves, Lewis supported his view that God chose to give us freedom even knowing that it could lead to sin:5 “he thought Freedom worth creating even at that price. It is like when mother allows a small child to walk on its own instead of holding it by her hand. She knows it may fall but learning to walk on one’s own is worth a few falls.”6 It also allows Screwtape and Wormwood to work at the patient almost without interruption, and they have developed many techniques to ensure their success. They mask the patient’s ability to see his self as he truly is and build up a false image in its place. Instead of self-reflection the patient is watching a drama. They cannot keep him from thinking lofty thoughts, but they may be able to distract him with lunch. They encourage the patient to excuse bad behavior by extenuating circumstances. He is not to afford the same excuses for others. If they cannot keep him from the church, they will bring forward all of his golden pictures of martyrs, togas and lions, in sharp contrast to the people actually sitting around him. They can stroke his vanity and at the same time surround him with superficial and worldly friends by letting him imagine that he is “doing these people ‘good’ by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes.”7 Since all pure enjoyment (even non-religious) can lead to an experience of the Numinous, Screwtape advises Wormwood to try to encourage the patient to activities that he will not enjoy, but will gain him general admiration. They draw attention to virtues and encourage pride. They take the secondary benefits of Christianity, such as charity or political consciousness and make it the “most important part” of the religion. Then they go a step farther and make Christianity important only insofar as it supports their political agenda. In the end Milton, Screwtape and Wormwood work use the same primary sin to their advantage. As Milton says, “Vanity. My favorite sin.” Every temptation is based on our own vanity, or pride. All our basest desires: everything we do to ‘fit in,’ false humilty, exaggerated religiosity, refraining from truth out of fear, and the desire to impress; are based in vanity. As fallen creatures even our higher emotions are tainted and open to exploitation. We give charity from a desire to be thought well of (thus Christ’s admonition to give in secret). Even love may be exploited. As the Lady says in The Great Divorce, “What we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.”8 And even when we are not strictly sinning, we run the risk of echoing the original sin, “not of choosing some evil thing, but in preferring a lesser good …before a greater.”9


The key to modern temptation is to make us unaware that it is occurring. That is what Lewis calls catering to the Spirit of the Age. In our age it is easy for temptation to pass unnoticed in all of the noise, chaos, and complication. We are surrounded by information, and accustomed to have new studies, surveys and opinions presented which are disproved almost daily. We don’t search for truth, but ideas, all of which may be thrown aside at the next bit of research. We are constantly bombarded by television, radio, traffic noise, and music. We spend our time dulled by a commute, work a mind numbing day in front of a computer screen, and then while away our free hours in front of the television or on the internet. In the midst of the flashy and ever-changing, we aren’t to notice that we are being asked to make choices, letting them be made for us by ‘public opinion.’

It is easy to see why Lewis was hesitant to revisit Screwtape Letters after writing it. While Screwtape offers an insightful glimpse into the myriad ways Christians can be tripped up, if read outside the context of Lewis’ other writings it presents a pretty bleak picture. No matter how hard the patient tries to improve his-self, and how many ways he grows, he is constantly tested. Until he is freed by a falling bomb, in nearly every temptation he comes out badly. A new test is at hand if he even feels proud about passing the last one. The missing piece that makes triumph out of our failure is, of course, Grace (Which from Screwtape’s perspective, is only mentioned in the patient’s conversion and untimely death). By the Grace of God we are free from all of these failings and temptations, not because we will not have to undergo them, but because ultimately it doesn’t matter. We cannot possibly be aware of every one of the thousands of ways we may have fallen short in the space of a day. We will never be as charitable as we ought, or patient, or kind, longsuffering, and all the rest. This doesn’t mean that these things aren’t important. We aren’t to “sin…so that grace abound[s] all the more”10 but we can be happy in the knowledge that the debt has already been paid for all of these sins. Though we are to become more like God with every choice we make, we can rest easy because a misstep does not negate our salvation. We will never be perfect, but we can strive for perfection. We may never be what we might have been had the fall not occurred (sheer speculation in what the Green Lady would call an “alongside world”), but by Grace we will “throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles us”11 and finally, in the end, become our true selves.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and the War 1931-1949. Edited by Walter Hooper. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 585
2. Ibid., 585.
3. The Devil’s Advocate.
4. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1942), 40.
5. It is worth noting that Lewis contradicts his own theology in this letter. In many works and letters it is quite clear that Lewis believes that God exists out of time, and thus sees all things happening at once in a constant “present.” To say that He grants freedom though it “could lead …to sin” is a notion he flatly denies in both The Problem of Pain and The Screwtape Letters. In The Problem With Pain, Lewis asserts that God did not choose free will as the best of available options, but as the only possibility. Screwtape assures Wormwood that God created the world clearly seeing an incident involving a cross. It is an interesting choice of words by Lewis, given how late in his writing career that letter was sent.
6. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931-1949. Edited by Walter Hooper. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 956.
7. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 52.
8. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1946), 125.
9. The Collected Letters, 585
10. Romans 5:20, NIV (New International Version)
11. Hebrews 12:1, NIV (New International Version)

Well it's official. I've been accepted by YWAM to go to Cambodia for five months. Lots of things to do now to get ready...

Waiting, still waiting to find out what I'll be doing this month. One application for a job in the United Kingdom was rejected -they don't accept applications unless one already has a work permit. The second job is waiting for a response. The third option I'm waiting on - hoping the "option" will become a reality.

I want option number 3 so badly, but it's going to be very difficult to pull it together in only a few weeks. And I'm still halfway through a class. Going well. Good grades on my first two papers. Stalled badly on my Screwtape Letters paper.

I'll let you know everything as soon as I know!

I can breathe!!! Through both nostrils! For the first time in 20 days...

Which is good, because I just ran out of kleenex!

The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce

And of that second kingdom will I sing
Wherein the human spirit doth purge itself
And to ascend to heaven becometh worthy
Dante, The Divine Comedy

The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis is a fictionalized journey to heaven “in the similitude of a dream.” 1 The author’s journey begins in the grey town; a city perpetually in twilight, where the populace is spread over millions of miles and getting further apart every minute. The author joins a group of people on a holiday excursion of the damned. 2 They ride a bus to heaven where each ghost is met by a Saint who has been sent back on their journey to bliss to give one last chance to the ghost in their charge to relinquish whatever keeps them in the grey city. This book raises question about Lewis’ theology of heaven, hell, and purgatory. 3 The subjects to be addressed are: does Lewis believe in unforgivable sin; does the doctrine of purgatory make an appearance; and does Lewis appear to believe in universal salvation.

Does Lewis believe in unforgivable sin? The Great Divorce shows a variety of types of sins. Some of the ghosts were guilty of “minor” sins; a propensity to complain, the desire to be attractive, or of putting too much stock into another human. Some clung to “moderate” sins; self pity, cruelty, and seeking intelligence instead of Truth. There are the Catholic “deadly” sins; pride, lust and greed. Damnation is not based on the severity of the sin: one of the saints had been a murderer. Redemption depends on what the ghost does when given a chance to relinquish its hold on whatever caused its banishment to the grey town. All sins are forgivable. Small sins are just as damning as great ones. The murderer was a Saint because he had thrown himself on the “Bleeding Charity” and was shown mercy. The man he was sent to save was a ghost on holiday, determined to only have his rights. He though himself a decent man, and only wanted his just deserts. God wanted to give him better than that, but the ghost wouldn’t accept anything not based on his own merits.

The ghost with the lizard on his shoulder presents the opposite circumstance. He had a certain level of self-awareness the first ghost had not; he recognized his sin and felt shame. He had tried, with all of his feeble power, to subdue the sin he couldn’t relinquish. It was still beyond his power to fully conquer that sin, and he knew that it could not accompany him to heaven. On the point of turning back to the grey country, where he and his lizard would both belong, he finally gave the lizard over to someone more powerful than himself. He gave permission for the lizard to be killed, and in turn he was transformed into a Saint. His sin also became its true self, not a hindrance, but a helpmate that sped his journey to the mountains. All sins can be redeemed only if they are given over to God to do what he wills with them.

Is Lewis’ view of Heaven in The Great Divorce similar to purgatory? Purgatory, according to Catholic Doctrine, is an in-between world for those that die in a state of grace to undergo purification in order to achieve the holiness necessary to enter heaven.” There is no true purgatory in The Great Divorce, only heaven and the grey town. The grey town is not purgatory because the people there are trapped outside of the state of grace: they cling to something other than God. It is not limbo – an unofficial doctrine of a place where the unredeemed good go to wait for Christ to redeem them. It is perhaps closest to what the Greek myths called Hades, and the Hebrews, Sheol. Hades is the gloomy abode of the dead, where almost all mortals go. When the belief of judgment after death became part of Greek thought, Hades became the destination of those who were not particularly good or bad. The grey city cannot be purgatory because the inhabitants of there are not redeemed. The suffering they undergo is of their own making and not intended for purification, which is the sole purpose of purgatory. George MacDonald tells Lewis of the grey town, “If they leave that… behind it will not have been Hell…it is Purgatory.” 4 So the grey area is not purgatory, it is hell. It may only be called purgatory in the past tense, by those that managed to escape. 5

Lewis does not appear to believe in Universal salvation; that all people will eventually find salvation and reconciliation with God. Lewis clearly expresses the opposite. The majority of those in the grey town never seek to leave it. Most of those who take the bus to heaven go back again because they cannot meet the demands placed on them; Some get back on the bus because Heaven is too foreign or not what they expected; Some are sent back to the grey town when, after being given their last chance for redemption, they refuse it, and disappear forever. In The Great Divorce, there is only limited neutrality. Once the sun rises, the boundary between Heaven and Hell will solidify. There will be no more transit from the grey town. “Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it.”6 When the morning comes, time will end. Though every soul has been and will be given a chance to accept God or deny him – Christ descended into hell for that very reason – the gift of free will means that each person will have their own way in the end. If a person hasn’t prayed “thy will be done” and meant it, they will not be reconciled.

The Great Divorce is one of my favorite Lewis books because it presents him at his best: able to bring difficult doctrine down to a layperson’s level. It is not an easy book, but the theme that runs through it reminds me of how I fall short. It is easy to substitute religion for a relationship with God and presume that I am doing alright. I can faithfully go through the motions my whole life, but in the end that won’t matter because nothing I do will earn my way into heaven. My first full sentence as a child was, “I can do it myself,” and as far as I am able I still depend on myself more than others. But reading The Great Divorce reminds me that relying on my-self is the thing that gets in the way of my relationship with God. I go to him only as a last resort, preferring to handle things as long as I am able. But this book holds up the mirror mentioned in James and reminds me for a while that I must want God more than my own dependability. I have to be willing to seek help instead of relying on my own strength. I am similar in character to the ghost that wanted only those rewards he’d earned. By trying to win my way to heaven, I am essentially saying that I want the rewards of the afterlife without actually having to go through God to get them. Lewis reminds me that “…[God] will not be used as a convenience.”7 I often shy away from God, preferring to substitute charity and religion, theology and service; it’s easier to commit to tasks than a relationship. I want to get into God’s kingdom, but I want to have as little to do with him as possible. The Great Divorce reminds me again to “ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.” 8



1 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1987), 2.
2 C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: Harper Collins, 1973), 67.
3 It would be useful to differentiate between Lewis’ personal theology and the fictional afterlife presented in The Great Divorce. First, in The Great Divorce there are no sins which are not capable of being forgiven. Lewis, in his other writings, discussed the one “unforgivable sin” – blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29, New International Version). Secondly, though what exactly is supposed to represent purgatory is not clearly defined, Lewis himself strongly believed in purgatory. In Letters to Malcolm he says, “the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed…the process of purification will normally involve suffering.” (pp. 109) Last, even though George MacDonald – one of the most renowned advocates of universal salvation - is Lewis’ spiritual mentor, both in life and in The Great Divorce, Lewis did not share that belief. He does, however, extend the possibility that those outside the faith may still be saved. In Romans, the apostle Paul states that those outside the law who still live according to it are an exception. (Romans 2:24-16, New International Version) Lewis’ fictionalization of this passage is in The Last Battle In the chapter ‘Further Up and Further In’ of The Last Battle, p.165; A young Calormene officer is admitted into the new Narnia, though he’d been a servant of Tash all his life. Aslan tells him, “all the service [you have] done to Tash, I account as service done to me…unless [your] desire had been for me, you [would not] have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”) Though it is clear what Lewis himself believes, The Great Divorce is not strictly his particular view of the afterlife. He allows multiple doctrines, both Catholic and Protestant, and does not limit this writing strictly to his own beliefs.
4 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 68.
5 An alternative to the grey city for purgatory would be the difficult journey through the mountains to “Deep Heaven.” I would argue that Lewis meant this journey in a different capacity. In his Letters to Malcolm, Chapter XX, p.108-9, Lewis speaks of purgatory as a process of purification that “will normally involve suffering.” This process is done at the instigation of the saved soul that “at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed.” He clearly contrasts this with process once in heaven of the “perpetual increase of beatitude, reached by a continually more ecstatic self-surrender, without the possibility of failure, but not perhaps without its own ardors and exertions.” In The Great Divorce the Saints promise, “It will be joy going to the mountains, but there will be plenty of work.” This is not a suffering, but the becoming of their true self. Both processes involve toil, but the first is made of suffering, and the second of joy.
6 Lewis, The Great Divorce,140.
7 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1942), 127.
8 Lewis, The Great Divorce, 28.

Well here's a twist. A job I'd thought of as temporary and transitory has just called and offered to "groom me for management." I'd be on a yearly salary, but only have to work about 6 months a year and could do whatever I liked with the rest of the time....

Too many choices! Happy New Year everybody!